Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography

In 1952, a Hungarian named Balthazar Korab—self-described as "just a student of architecture with a camera in his pocket"—visited his first monumental modernist building, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, outside of Paris. Korab, who had escaped Hungary in 1949 when Budapest was under threat of Soviet occupation, was studying at the distinguished École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Within two years, his path would veer even further into what is now architectural history. After marrying a woman from Michigan, he moved to Detroit, and once there, impressed architect Eero Saarinen enough to get hired on the spot as a designer at his firm.